This low-watt British thriller has never got a decent release either on DVD or VHS, despite strong performances from three great character actors.
Peter Finch is, of course, best known for playing a crazed news anchor-man "Howard Beal" in "Network", a role for which he won a post-humous Academy Award. But his other famous role was as a beleaguered husband in "The Pumpkin Eater", a role very similar to the one he plays here. Shelley Winters plays his nagging, shrewish wife. She is good as always, but doesn't have nearly enough screen time. The real surprise though is Linda Hayden, famous for playing sexy, evil (and oft-naked) vixens in movies like "Blood on Satan's Claw". Unfortunately, her best movie, "House on Straw Hill" was actually banned in Britain back in the day and, as a result, has been barely released outside it. And her earlier collaboration with director Alistair Reid, "Baby Love", is also problematic since she debuted in this rather sexy role at the tender age of 15.
Finch plays a decent, well-meaning husband whose life is entirely destroyed by his own horribly bad decisions and two different female harpies--his wife Shelly winters and Linda Hayden, a very pregnant hitchhiker he picks up. Instead of playing her usual sexy and evil, Hayden is just plain evil here, and never has a pregnant woman seemed so menacing. I won't give away the plot, but Finch's character soon has at least one body on his hands as his life spins into blackly comic, vortex nightmare.
I saw the crappy, cut VHS version of this (the only one currently available), but even so it is a quite entertaining movie. It certainly deserves better.
